Eat in Song Dynasty

Chapter 430 The Story of the Stone

"Why would Dad push you out? How about this? Dad will tell you a story. Don't you like listening to stories the most?"

On weekdays, Wen Shu would definitely jump three feet high, because she really likes listening to stories.

But today, she has already foreseen what "story" her father will tell next.

Although I don't want to hear it, my father must have felt uncomfortable when he mentioned this matter a few times, so let's listen to him.

"Okay, I like listening to stories the most." After adding a handful of firewood, Wen Shu sat up straight and pretended to be happy: "Let's start."

She is so serious, Wen Tai is a little uncomfortable.But after thinking about it, this matter must be said after all, so he turned his head and looked at the yard, as if thinking about the past.

He said: "More than ten years ago, there was a small mountain village in the south, and there was a family surnamed Li in the village."

As Wen Tai spoke slowly, Wen Shu knew such a story.
More than ten years ago, in a small mountain village in Luoyuan County, Fuzhou, there was a family named Li. The man was named Li Luo, and the woman was Guo Ying.

When Shitou was ten years old, the hostess Guo Ying passed away because of a cold, and the hostess Li Luo remarried soon after.

Not long after the bride passed the door, she drove the two children to sleep in the woodshed. That year Shi Shi was ten years old and Erya was six years old.

After a while, besides sleeping in the woodshed, the two children were gradually not allowed to eat more food, and all the work in the house, including the work in the field, fell on the two children, and the male master also began to get gambled fault.

The folks in the village couldn't stand it, and they tried to persuade Li Luo, but under the influence of the pillow wind, Li Luo, who was addicted to gambling, didn't care about the life and death of the two children at all.

When Shi Shi was 13 years old, he mortgaged his two children because of losing a bet.

Later, people from the gambling shop came to collect the debts and almost took the two children away. Fortunately, the elders of the village came forward and forced Li Luo to use the house as a mortgage to save the two children.

After this incident, Shitou was completely disappointed in his father, and broke off relations with his father in front of the whole village elders that day, and moved out of Li's house with his nine-year-old sister, Erya, to set up a family alone.

So far, the two brothers and sisters have no father and no mother, and rely on Li Shi's odd jobs and the occasional help from the villagers.

After a year or two like this, Li Luo slipped and fell into a pond on a rainy night and drowned. Before his body was buried, the bride he married later ran away with what little property he had left.

Li Luo had no one to bury him, and at the end of the clan elder's agreement, the brother and sister sent him off for the last time in sackcloth and filial piety.

Slowly, as they got older, the life of the two siblings got better and better. Erya and the village aunt learned to weave, and Li Shi also went to the town's Shoucai shop as an apprentice.

By the time Shitou was 17 years old, the two brothers and sisters had saved seven or eight pennies.

Just when the two siblings were discussing whether to buy a house or a field first, something unfortunate happened.

One day, Apprentice Stone's shop came to an urgent job, and his master was too busy, so he asked him not to go back at night, and helped him catch up with the work, and he was paid twice as much.

The master is very kind to Shitou on weekdays, and if the stone is not good, leave the master alone, thinking that my sister is a sensible child, and there are neighbors to take care of her, so it should be fine if she doesn't go back overnight, so she asked the people in the same village to bring a message to Erya.

During the day the next day, Shitou didn't have time to go home because he had to rush to work. He didn't know that his sister was missing until he returned to the village in the evening.

After asking around, the neighbor told him that his sister had been trying to find him last night, and they stopped him for a long time before persuading him.

Unexpectedly, when I got up early this morning, I found that she had gone out and never came back halfway.

After hearing this, Shitou searched for people all over the village, but he searched all night and found no trace. It was not until the next morning that he saw her sister stumbling back.

Shitou was worried and anxious all night, and the first time he saw his sister, he didn't pay attention to her messy hair. He just asked her where she was and why she didn't come home all night.

Erya only shook her head, cried, and didn't say a word from the beginning to the end.

Shi Shi thought she was frightened by his ferocious expression and stern tone, so he scolded her a few more words, and let her go to rest and cook by himself.

But when he finished cooking and came out, Erya disappeared again.Just when he was looking for it, he heard from the villagers that someone in the village had committed suicide by jumping into the river.

Shitou felt bad all of a sudden, put down his bowl and chopsticks and ran to the west of the village.

But when they ran to the pond in the west of the village, they only saw a corpse.

He didn't know why his younger sister wanted to commit suicide, he thought he had "cursed" her earlier, and she couldn't stand it, so she committed suicide. He blamed himself and felt sad at one point, and even wanted to commit suicide.

But later, by chance, I heard from a villager that Wang Daqiu, a wealthy businessman in Beicun, got drunk in a restaurant and bragged about how many little ladies he had played with.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt that his sister might have encountered such an unbearable and dirty thing, but he hated himself for not noticing it at the time.In anger, he went directly to the wealthy businessman Wang's family, wanting to confront Wang Daqiu.

That Wang Daqiu just drank the wine, his mind was not clear at first, but when he heard Shitou's question, he admitted it very readily.

Shito didn't hear that, and in anger, he fought with Wang Daqiu, and finally pushed him to the ground by mistake, hitting the rock and dying.

Knowing that he had accidentally killed someone, Shi Shi didn't regret nor panic, anyway, he was also alone.

He only regretted that he didn't notice his sister's emotions at the time, and it's good to be able to vent his anger for her now after saving her sister.

Frustrated, he went directly to the government to surrender.

The county magistrate at that time was a good official. After finding out the truth, he remembered that his sister was the victim, and he also accidentally killed someone.

In this way, the stone was escorted by officials to Lin'an to repair the embankment. This repair lasted for a year.

After the embankment was finished, when the escort returned to his hometown, there was a flood in the surrounding counties and counties. The officials who escorted him were dispersed by the refugees, and he was also rushed and wrapped up by the refugees, and went to the nearby counties.

After that, they followed the people in the city and flowed out of the city again, heading towards the Central Plains.

On the way, he met a woman surnamed Hu who was fleeing with her child.The child is only two or three months old, and she has to carry the luggage and the child by herself, which is very hard work.

Shitou thought of himself when he was young, and felt sympathetic, so he wanted to step forward to help.

At first, the woman surnamed Hu also had scruples in her heart and kept refusing his help. It was not until her child fell ill that Shi Shi kept helping her find herbs, cooking rice and boiling medicine, and gradually she felt relieved.

The road to escape is not easy at all, let alone a woman who takes care of the child alone without a man to help, it is very easy to cause people to die.

Hu Shi was quite pretty, but seeing the eyes of the men around her start to look strange, she felt very uneasy.

Goodbye Shitou was straightforward and honest, he had been with her for so long, and he never looked at her too much, so he thought, why not let him pretend to be his husband-in-law and escort him to Beijing.

In order for Shi Shi to send her to Beijing with peace of mind and to ensure his own safety, he promised that as long as he sent her to the capital, his relatives would give him ten taels of silver in return.

Shitou was a person with nothing to worry about. Seeing that woman was pitiful, he thought that he had nowhere to go anyway, so he might as well finish his good deeds and give her a ride.

In this way, the two went to the capital together.

One day, Shitou went to collect firewood and passed by a small forest on the mountain behind the temple. He suddenly heard a baby crying. When he got closer, he found that it was a newborn baby.

Wrinkled, thin and small, I didn't know what to do for a while.

It was the woman surnamed Hu who came to look for him. Seeing the child crying pitifully and looking like a newborn, she thought that if no one picked it up, she might not make it past tonight. Hello.

(End of this chapter)